Misleading "not enough space (for disc cache)" message

[A.I.1]

This happens in After Effects CC 2023 (but I think it does the same thing in After Effects CC 2022) using Windows 10 Pro.

When I load After Effects I get the message "Your disc cache folder is on a drive that does not have enough available space to safely store the full amount specified in your preferences. Please make more space available or go to "Media & Disk Cache preferences to change the folder or maximum disc cache size."

In think the above message is incorrect.

Drive H, where disc cache is:

After Effects disc cache folder takes up 1.45 TB (1,606,163,136,512 bytes)

The drive says:
used space 1.46 TB
free space 2.17 TB

Capacity 3.63 TB

-----
Media & Disc Cache preferences say:

Enabled Disc Cache: [checked]

Max Disc Cache Size: 2500 GB

Basically the "Your disc cache folder is on a drive that does not have enough available space..." message is wrong. The message doesn't take into account the amount already taken up by the existing After Effects disc cache.

Since the drive has a capacity of 3.63 TB (and I mainly only use that drive for After Effects, and previously I only used it for the AE disc cache and it gave this error previously) I should be able to store roughly (or very close to) 3.63 TB of After Effects cache on it (if I didn't use it for anything else).

But After Effects just seems to say (made up variables): "If free_space_on_drive < max_AE_disc_cache_size then show that "not enough space" warning.

Surely what it should be saying is something like "If free_space_on_drive < (max_AE_disc_cache_size - the_current_AE_disc_cache_size) then show the "not enough space" warning.

With the current way it does the warning, if you only use a drive for the AE disc cache, if you set the max disc cache size to > half the disc size then when half the disc is used up you're going to get the current warning incorrectly telling you there's not enough space to fully store the cache.

[Mylenium]

Without any exact system info, in particular about the drives and their partitioninmg/ formatting we can't tell you much. Disk metrics and file handling are complicated, especially for such large drives. Sure, could well be that the internal cache function is miscalculating things, but then again this may simply be something to do with how the drives are mounted in your system. A screenshot of your disk management snap-in and the relevant info for the drives as well as possibly the controller and driver info from the device manager might be relevant.

Mylenium

[A.I.1]

Here's some screenshots:

Drive H which is the AE disc cache drive isn't partioned (it just says "basic partition") - ie. it's not partioned into multiple drives.

[Mylenium]

Does AE show the same behavior if you assign the cache to the G: drive or even your system C: drive? Have you considered trimming down the cache to say 200 GB or even less just to test if this is a real issue? Have you run the Seagate diagnostic tool to check the disk health? Also have you checked the media cache on your E: drive?

Mylenium

[A.I.1]

I expect it would show the same behaviour on drive G or drive C but drive C is half the size of drive H and it has the operating system on so shouldn't be as good as a disc cache drive. Drive G is a physical hard disc (not an NVMe SSD) so should be quite a bit slower than drive H so that shouldn't be as good/quick if used for a disc cache drive. I got drive H (an NVMe drive) specifically for AE cache so it would be faster for it than a slower SSD or a hard drive.

I don't think it's to do with the media cache on drive E because 1) It says the free space isn't enough when it's < the max disc cache size on drive H. I've just tried setting the max disc cache size to 2000 GB like you suggested and it doesn't give that warning when AE loads. That shows it's not the media cache on drive E that's the cause of the warning (when the max disc cache size was 2500 GB).

In AE's disc cache preference section it says to "allocate as much space as possible" for the disc cache. But that's a bit misleading if it's going to warn you if you load AE when it's set to more than half the disc size and your current disc cache is > half the disc size.

I've installed and run the short self test of the H drive wtih SeaTools and that says it passed (see attachment).

I could just leave the max cache size at about half the drive size so it won't give me the warning (or set it to more and just keep pressing okay on the annoying warning). But 1) I want After Effects to run as fast as possible while 2) Making sure the cache drive has a long enough lifetime. I think unnecessarily purging the disc cache could lead to a shorter lifetime for the disc. Whereas, assuming no frames are corrupted in the cache, leaving the max disc cache on maybe about 75% of the drive or maybe a bit more, should allow a lot to be cached so run faster while also having it only remove the oldest cached items to make new for new ones. In theory that might have the most benefit in terms of speed of After Effects usage+disc lifetime (if no disc cache purges required). Though I don't know if having a big disc cache will also make it slower to close AE.